NOTE: The information below is derived from Michael Collins Piper's Final Judgment. My role is that of a reviewer, and all credit for the research must be given to Mr. Piper. I urge everyone to purchase a copy of this book.
Final Judgment is published by The Center for Historical Review, 132 Third Street, SE, Washington, DC, 20003 (1-888-699-NEWS)

Perhaps the biggest secret of the Vietnam War is that our Central Intelligence Agency seized control of the infamous Golden Triangle during that time period, then, along with assistance from various elements of Organized Crime, shipped huge amounts of heroin out of that area into our country. Because piles of money were being made from this practice and many others, those who stood to profit from this horrendous war  the armament manufacturers, bankers, military men, and drug dealers  met any suggestion to withdraw from Vietnam with immediate consternation. But that's exactly what John F. Kennedy intended to do upon re-election. In fact, he had already planned on telling the American people that their troops would be back home by 1965. Think about this momentous decision for a moment. If we had exited Vietnam by 1965, EIGHT years of bloodshed in the jungles and civil unrest on America's streets and campuses could have been alleviated.

Michael Collins Piper writes in Final Judgment: "Kennedy's intended change in Vietnam policy  his plan to unilaterally withdraw from the imbroglio  infuriated not only the CIA but elements in the Pentagon and their allies in the military-industrial-complex. By this time, of course, the Lansky Syndicate had already set-up international heroin running from Southeast Asia through the CIA-linked Corsican Mafia in the Mediterranean. The joint Lansky-CIA operations in the international drug racket were a lucrative venture that thrived as a consequence of deep U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia as a cover for drug smuggling activities."

Piper's simple one-paragraph explanation may be the most concise overview of the Vietnam War ever written. The military men and defense contractors were making out like bandits from the War Machine, while the CIA crooks and Lansky-led Mobsters (via Santo Traficante as the major wheeler-dealer) were likewise padding their pockets. Author Peter Dale Scott, in Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, said of this phenomenon, "The flood of drugs into this country since WWII was one of the major 'unspeakable' secrets leading to the ongoing cover-up of the Kennedy assassination."

To provide a broader perspective on this situation, Professor Alfred McCoy stated in The Politics of Heroin, "Since the prohibition of narcotics in 1920, alliances between drug brokers and intelligence agencies have protected the global narcotics traffic. Given the frequency of such alliances, there seems a natural attraction between intelligence agencies and criminal syndicates. Both are practitioners of what one retired CIA operative has called the 'clandestine arts'  the basic skill of operating outside the normal channels of civil society. Among all the institutions of modern society, intelligence agencies and crime syndicates alone maintain large organizations capable of carrying out covert operations without fear of detection."

On the government side, the two main Golden Triangle runners were Ted Schackley and Thomas Clines  the same two men who ran Operation Mongoose (the plot to take out Fidel Castro). Thus, from 1960-1975, the CIA deployed a secret force of 30,000 Hmong tribesmen to fight the Laotian Communists. They also created heroin labs in this area; then brought it out via their own private airline  Air America.

Alfred McCoy, in The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, describes how the CIA first gave smack to our own American soldiers in Vietnam before shipping it into the United States, where Lansky mobsters dealt it on the streets.

Sam Giancana's biographers reinforced this point by stating that while organized crime did its thing, "The CIA looked the other way  allowing over $100 million a year in illicit drugs to flow through Havana into the U.S. It was an arrangement similar to all the rest they'd made. The CIA received 10% of the take on the side of narcotics, which they utilized for their undercover slush fund."

After the Mob and the CIA generated this dirty money, they laundered it into secret bank accounts controlled by the international bankers. That way, the government couldn't get their hands on it and the funds could be invested in the stock market, loaned out to other businesses on the take, or channeled into the Secret Services' black budgets.

So, even though the above information is only the tip of the iceberg, now do you see why it was so important to the CIA/Mobster/international banker cabal that JFK didn't pull America out of Vietnam? The money (via illegal drug trafficking and for the War Machine) was incredible, while CONTROL of another area of the globe (the Golden Triangle) was secured.

As a final note, only FOUR DAYS after John Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon Baines Johnson, his successor, put his name on NSAM 273, which secured our increased involvement in Southeast Asia. These guys weren't wasting any time! Within a few short months, our involvement in Vietnam went from 20,000 troops to a quarter of a million! The CIA had won, and ten years later 57,000 American soldiers were dead - truly shocking and abysmal behavior  an embarrassment and blight on the American consciousness.